The Optimist's Daughter
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The Optimist's Daughter
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Narrated by:
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Eudora Welty
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By:
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Eudora Welty
About this listen
This story of a young woman's confrontation with death and her past is a poetic study of human relations.
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Novel great, reader not so much.
- By Marcia on 05-17-20
By: N. Scott Momaday
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A Good Scent from a Strange Mountain
- By: Robert Olen Butler
- Narrated by: Robert Olen Butler
- Length: 9 hrs and 44 mins
- Unabridged
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Overall4.5 out of 5 stars 140
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Performance4.5 out of 5 stars 124
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Story4.5 out of 5 stars 124
Robert Olen Butler's lyrical and poignant collection of stories about the aftermath of the Vietnam War and its impact on the Vietnamese was acclaimed by critics across the nation and won the Pulitzer Prize in 1993. This edition includes two subsequently published stories - "Salem" and "Missing" - that brilliantly complete the collection's narrative journey with a return to the jungles of Vietnam.
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5 out of 5 stars
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RARE AND WONDERFUL STORIES!
- By Mimi Routh on 05-06-14
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The Keepers of the House
- By: Shirley Ann Grau
- Narrated by: Anna Fields
- Length: 9 hrs and 18 mins
- Unabridged
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Overall4.5 out of 5 stars 2,890
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Performance4.5 out of 5 stars 2,546
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Story4.5 out of 5 stars 2,537
Abigail was the last keeper of the house, the last to know the Howland family's secrets. Now, in the name of all her brothers and sisters, she must take her bitter revenge on the small-minded Southern town that shamed them, persecuted them, but could never destroy them.
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5 out of 5 stars
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Wonderful
- By Pyewacket on 12-12-07
By: Shirley Ann Grau
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A Fable
- By: William Faulkner
- Narrated by: Kevin Pariseau
- Length: 20 hrs and 1 min
- Unabridged
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Overall3.5 out of 5 stars 56
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Performance4 out of 5 stars 47
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Story3 out of 5 stars 47
An allegorical story of World War I set in the trenches in France and dealing ostensibly with a mutiny in a French regiment.
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3 out of 5 stars
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Bad Production and Direction
- By Andy Curry on 05-08-17
By: William Faulkner
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The Diary of a Country Priest
- By: Georges Bernanos
- Narrated by: Kris Dyer
- Length: 11 hrs and 14 mins
- Unabridged
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Overall4.5 out of 5 stars 36
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Performance4.5 out of 5 stars 34
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Story4.5 out of 5 stars 34
A young, shy, sickly priest is assigned to his first parish, a sleepy village in Northern France. Though his faith is devout, he finds nothing but indifference and mockery. The children laugh at his teachings, his parishioners are consumed by boredom, rumours are spread about him and he is tormented by stomach pains. Even his attempts to clarify his thoughts in a diary fail to deliver him from worldly concerns. Yet somehow, despite his suffering, he tries to find love for his fellow humans and even a state of grace.
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4 out of 5 stars
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A "Bucket List" Book to Read
- By S. Cremona on 05-11-22
By: Georges Bernanos
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Tinkers
- By: Paul Harding
- Narrated by: Christian Rummel
- Length: 4 hrs and 52 mins
- Unabridged
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Overall3.5 out of 5 stars 518
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Performance4 out of 5 stars 343
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Story3.5 out of 5 stars 351
An old man lies dying. Confined to bed in his living room, he sees the walls around him begin to collapse, the windows come loose from their sashes, and the ceiling plaster fall off in great chunks, showering him with a lifetime of debris: newspaper clippings, old photographs, wool jackets, rusty tools, and the mangled brass works of antique clocks. Soon, the clouds from the sky above plummet down on top of him, followed by the stars, till the black night covers him like a shroud. He is hallucinating.
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2 out of 5 stars
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Annoying and pretentious
- By William on 01-12-09
By: Paul Harding
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Humboldt's Gift
- By: Saul Bellow
- Narrated by: Christopher Hurt
- Length: 18 hrs and 5 mins
- Unabridged
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Overall4 out of 5 stars 238
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Performance4 out of 5 stars 164
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Story4 out of 5 stars 163
For years, they were the best of friends: the grand, erratic Humboldt and the ambitious young Charlie. But now Humboldt has died a failure, and Charlie's success-ridden life has taken various turns for the worse. Then Humboldt acts from the grave to change Charlie's life: he has left Charlie something in his will.
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5 out of 5 stars
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Great Book, Great Reader
- By Scott on 05-10-08
By: Saul Bellow
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The Fixer
- A Novel
- By: Bernard Malamud
- Narrated by: Victor Bevine
- Length: 10 hrs and 10 mins
- Unabridged
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Overall4 out of 5 stars 200
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Performance4.5 out of 5 stars 174
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Story4.5 out of 5 stars 171
Set in Kiev in 1911 during a period of heightened anti-Semitism, the novel tells the story of Yakov Bok, a Jewish handyman blamed for the brutal murder of a young Russian boy. Bok leaves his village to try his luck in Kiev and, after denying his Jewish identity, finds himself working for a member of the anti-Semitic Black Hundreds Society. When the boy is found nearly drained of blood in a cave, the Black Hundreds accuse the Jews of ritual murder.
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5 out of 5 stars
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Technical Problems Need To Ne Resolved
- By REX LANYI on 12-24-20
By: Bernard Malamud
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The Reivers
- By: William Faulkner
- Narrated by: John H. Mayer
- Length: 11 hrs and 22 mins
- Unabridged
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Overall4 out of 5 stars 239
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Performance4.5 out of 5 stars 183
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Story4 out of 5 stars 183
One of Faulkner's comic masterpieces, The Reivers is a picaresque story that tells of three unlikely car thieves from rural Mississippi. Eleven-year-old Lucas Priest is persuaded by Boon Hogganbeck, one of his family's retainers, to steal his grandfather's car and make a trip to Memphis. The priests' black coachman, Ned McCaslin, stows away, and the three of them are off on a heroic odyssey.
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4 out of 5 stars
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4 days in the life of an eleven year old
- By ruth a anderson on 11-17-09
By: William Faulkner
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Angle of Repose
- By: Wallace Stegner
- Narrated by: Mark Bramhall
- Length: 22 hrs and 9 mins
- Unabridged
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Overall4.5 out of 5 stars 2,496
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Performance4.5 out of 5 stars 2,104
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Story4.5 out of 5 stars 2,102
Wallace Stegner's uniquely American classic centers on Lyman Ward, a noted historian who relates a fictionalized biography of his pioneer grandparents at a time when he has become estranged from his own family. Through a combination of research, memory, and exaggeration, Ward voices ideas concerning the relationship between history and the present, art and life, parents and children, and husbands and wives.
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5 out of 5 stars
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The Quest for Balance
- By Mel on 01-24-13
By: Wallace Stegner
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Elbow Room
- The Varieties of Free Will Worth Wanting
- By: Daniel C Dennett
- Narrated by: Don Hagen
- Length: 9 hrs and 54 mins
- Unabridged
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Overall4.5 out of 5 stars 79
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Performance4.5 out of 5 stars 65
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Story4 out of 5 stars 62
In this landmark 1984 work on free will, Daniel Dennett makes a case for compatibilism. His aim, as he writes in the preface to this new edition, was a cleanup job, "saving everything that mattered about the everyday concept of free will while jettisoning the impediments". In Elbow Room, Dennett argues that the varieties of free will worth wanting - those that underwrite moral and artistic responsibility - are not threatened by advances in science but distinguished, explained, and justified in detail.
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4 out of 5 stars
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Good points but rambling
- By Brandon B. on 03-09-16
By: Daniel C Dennett
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A Lesson Before Dying
- By: Ernest J. Gaines
- Narrated by: Lionel Mark Smith, Roger Guenveur Smith
- Length: 3 hrs and 3 mins
- Abridged
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Overall4 out of 5 stars 848
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Performance4 out of 5 stars 654
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Story4 out of 5 stars 649
Jefferson is an innocent and unwitting party to a deadly liquor store shoot-out in the 1940s. As the only survivor, he is tried and convicted of murder and sentenced to death. Grant Wiggins, a university-trained teacher at the plantation school, is persuaded to visit Jefferson in his cell. Wiggins is torn between staying in his native Cajun community or moving on. The 2 men gradually form a bond as they jointly discover the simple heroism of resisting - and denying - the expected.
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2 out of 5 stars
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Misses the mark
- By Amie on 02-09-12
By: Ernest J. Gaines
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The Executioner's Song
- By: Norman Mailer
- Narrated by: Maxwell Hamilton
- Length: 42 hrs and 37 mins
- Unabridged
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Overall4 out of 5 stars 420
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Performance4 out of 5 stars 379
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Story4.5 out of 5 stars 379
Norman Mailer's Pulitzer Prize-winning and unforgettable classic about convicted killer Gary Gilmore now in audio. Arguably the greatest book from America's most heroically ambitious writer, The Executioner's Song follows the short, blighted life of Gary Gilmore who became famous after he robbed two men in 1976 and killed them in cold blood. After being tried and convicted, he immediately insisted on being executed for his crime. To do so, he fought a system that seemed intent on keeping him alive long after it had sentenced him to death.
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3 out of 5 stars
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Pulitzer-winner spoiled by numskulled narration
- By W Perry Hall on 05-21-18
By: Norman Mailer
Enjoyed it.
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A perfect southern book
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Superb reading and writing
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I love listening to books read by the author.
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magnificent
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Introduction to Welty's style
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Southern voice. I would listen again.
The optimists daughter
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BEAUTIFUL
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My introduction to Welty's Writing
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Every widow should read this book
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